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September 25, 2012

Potential referees for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil™ are meeting
for the first time in Zurich this week, with 52 people hailing from 46
different countries taking part in an initial referee workshop being
held from 24-28 September. Having undergone medical tests over the past
few days, the 52 candidates were officially welcomed by FIFA President
Joseph S. Blatter on Monday morning.

"I would like to congratulate you for being selected for this trip to
the World Cup at Brazil 2014," said Blatter. "The preparations ahead of
the tournament are incredibly important. You will form my team, which
will be the 33rd team at the World Cup and one of the most important."

September 22, 2012

World of Football Refereeing will prospectively feature an own but naturally inofficial referee category system as counterpart to UEFA's official group system classifying their officials into Elite Group, Elite Development Group, First, Second and Third Group. There will be merely small changes related to the group system itself, but significant ones concerning the officials belonging to the respective groups.

Its implementation strengthens the opinion-related part of this blog on the basis of its great community.

It must be emphasized that this system is certainly not perfect at all due to the limited opportunities one has as neutral observer being not involved in UEFA's procedures. The allocation of the officials to their groups depends on the collected impressions of the performances received and communicated by our community of this blog.

Furthermore, the referee categories will be updated every quarter year; the next update will be hence made shortly after the last matchday in UEFA's club competitions in December.

Following multiple and diverse forms of Turkish media, German FIFA referee Wolfgang Stark has been certified an "unacceptable performance" at last week's UEFA Champions League Group H encounter between Manchester United and Galatasaray Istanbul.

According to these sources, Norwegian UEFA referee observer Jon Skjervold awarded him a 6.3 having made three crucial mistakes including two missed penalty kicks to the Turkish side and a wrong penalty he awarded to the home team. Galatasaray later lost the clash by 0-1.

The observer's scale, the European governing body utilizes, comprises a scope from 6.0 to 10.0, which is the best mark possible a match official can get, 6.0 to 6.9 means an "unacceptable performance" that could have immense consequences for the respective referee.

Wolfgang Stark, having been sent home after two missed penalty kicks in a EURO 2012 match between Croatia and Spain both favouring the later champions, is currently joining UEFA's Elite Group featuring the - on paper - 22 best European match officials. In addition, he was in charge of last season's UEFA Europa League final at Bucharest, Romania.

The quality of the reports issued in the mentioned media cannot be verified by me so that this piece of news must be considered without certainty.

Paraguayan FIFA official Carlos Torres, who is still recovering after undergoing surgery on the
meniscus over a year ago, announced that the treatment takes longer than
expected and, after reflecting with his family, decided to retire from
active refereeing.

Torres said that, however, he will not quit
refereeing completely, but will join the Referees Department of the
Paraguayan Football Association and will help with the recruiting and
training of new referees.

Torres started refereeing at age 16
and remained active until last year, when he got injured. He recalled
its way through the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2007 Copa America, as
well as his first appearance in a first division match, Caaguazu –
Colombia, in December 1990. On the international list since 1998, Carlos
Torres enjoyed his career, but regrets that he was not able to referee
at a World Cup, although he was pre-selected by FIFA on the initial list
for South Africa 2010 and also for Brazil 2014.

September 18, 2012

Deniz Aytekin will take charge of Thursday's clash between Internazionale and Rubin Kazan at Milano's Giuseppe Meazza Stadium. UEFA has published all the other appointments, too, featuring a mixture of expected names and very interesting designations.

September 17, 2012

Turkish official Firat Aydinus has been nominated to be in charge of Wednesday's classic clash between FC Bayern München and Valencia CF. I doubt that someone in our community would have expected that before, personally I was pretty much stunned by this appointment for some reason.

September 16, 2012

UEFA has published the first package of referee appointments for the first matchday of 2012/13 UEFA Champions League season including absolute top clashes like Real Madrid - Manchester City that will be handled by Slovenian official Damir Skomina.